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RIGHT INTERPRETATION 



OP 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES: 



HELPS AND THE HINDRANCES 



AN 



INAUGURAL DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED AT ANDOVER, SEPT. 1, 1852 



BY 



C. E. STOWE, 

Professor of Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary. 



Prom the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1853. 



ANDOVER: 

PRESS OF WARREN F. DRAPER. 
1853. 



THE 



RIGHT INTERPRETATION 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES: 



HELPS AND THE HINDRANCES. 



INAUGURAL DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED AT A>D^ER, SEPT. 1, 1852 



A^O^EE 



BY 



C. E/ STOWE, 

f Professor of Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary. 



Prom the Bibliotheca Sacra for January,-! 853. 
^t^V 



ANDOVER: 

PRESS BY WARREN F. DRAPER. 
1853. 



*,•>•* 



VtSK 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 

WARREX T. DRAPER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



DISCOURSE. 



The intellectual activity of the last fifty years has scarcely been 
equalled, never surpassed, in any other half century of the world's 
history. It has busied itself in every department of human thought ; 
theology and sacred science have been as much the subject of it as 
chemistry and astronomy, and it ought not to have been, it could not 
have been otherwise. The Andover Theological Seminary, the ear- 
liest of its kind in existence, was projected at the commencement of 
this period ; and was specially designed by Providence to accomplish 
a specific work indispensably necessary just at this stage of the world's 
progress, a mission which it has successfully fulfilled and is still ful- 
filling. 

Notwithstanding the great practical advantages, in many important 
respects, of pursuing the study of theology with a settled pastor, it is 
absolutely certain that the great missionary enterprises of the age, 
and the intellectual excitement and culture necessary to meet the 
multiform and active infidelity of the period, never could have been 
provided for without the ample resources, the extended associations, 
the large combinations, the friendly collisions, the permanent relation- 
ships of well endowed and numerously attended theological schools. 
Such an institution was a necessity of the age, and was so proved by 
the numerous imitations to which this first example of the kind so 
speedily gave origin. 

The science of theology was zealously pursued and well understood 
in New England at that time ; but the science of Biblical interpreta- 
tion had been little attended to for several generations ; there was 
almost nothing of it to be found ; but few ministers were in the habit 
of reading even the Greek Testament, and as to the Hebrew, without 
which the New Testament Greek cannot be understood, probably not 
one minister in a hundred could read readily a single verse of the Old 
Testament in the original. In the science of Biblical interpretation, 
and in the sphere of missionary activity, this institution found its 
appropriate providential pioneer*work. The men who first occupied 



the posts of instruction, were singularly adapted to both these branches 
of spiritual labor ; they were the men for the time and for the work. 
He who for nearly forty years was the incumbent of the professorship 
of Sacred Literature here, was emphatically the man for his business. 
Unquenchable zeal, untiring industry, unwavering self-reliance, un- 
flinching boldness, transparent honesty and a determined will carried 
him through all the difficulties which beset his way and gave him as 
secure and permanent a triumph as ever a frail mortal enjoyed. So 
far as the nations which speak the English language are concerned, 
he made the department, created its resources, excited the taste for 
the study, and furnished the means for gratifying it. And this was 
not done without suspicion and hostility and severe opposition even 
from good men, whose sphere of vision was rather limited. 

The influence of his labors will continue to be felt long after the 
labors themselves shall have become mere matters of history. The 
influence already seen is immense. The intellectual culture of the 
ministry, especially in the linguistic and critical departments, is a 
hundred fold above what it was when he began ; the practical effi- 
ciency of the ministry has advanced in almost an equal proportion, 
and I have no evidence that the former generations were, as a gene- 
ral fact, more filled with the spirit than the present. 

Not the least among the great services which Professor Stuart 
rendered to the cause of sacred learning, was the bringing to the 
knowledge of his countrymen the great Biblical critics of continental 
Europe, such as Michaelis, Eichhorn, Jahn, Rosenmiiller, Gesenius, 
De Wette, and others, whose profound learning, earnest investigations, 
iron diligence and general fairness, introduced a new era in sacred 
science, and probably caused the original languages of the Old and 
New Testament to be better understood than they have been at any 
other time since they ceased to be vernacular. Whether they had 
generally in themselves experienced the power of that religion whose 
documents they so successfully elucidated, may well be doubted} 
but as grammarians, as lexicographers, as verbal and historical 
critics, they occupy the very first rank. Used with proper dis- 
crimination, their works are of unspeakable value, nor can they be 
dispensed with in this branch of study. They are sober writers, if 
not regenerate in the evangelical sense; and as Balaam, whose fault 
it was to love the wages of unrighteousness, did, in spite of himself, 
bear a true message from God to Balak, so these men, allowing that 
they were worldly men and unregenerate, did learn and teach very 
many things in regard to God's written word, which it is of the high* 



est importance for the Christian minister to know. Their credit hafr 
been much marred in public estimation by the fact that, in their 
own country, they have been succeeded by a host of critics of the 
ultra-Hegelian or Tubingen school, who, with all their learning and 
high pretensions, by their extravagant, groundless hypotheses, their 
contempt of all the laws of evidence and rules of logic, by their gross 
irreverence and obvious destitution of the religious sentiment, make 
themselves well-nigh worthless in philology, while in theology we 
must pronounce them impious. It may be sufficient to mention, as 
specimens of this class, the names of David Strauss and Bruno Bauer ; 
while the more respectable names of F. C. Baur and A. F. Gfrbrer 
are scarcely less to be dreaded. 
. All the ground which has actually been gained thus far, by every 
means, must be sedulously maintained; much yet remains to be 
done by the faithful student of sacred learning ; and to this still re- 
maining work let us address ourselves with a zeal and energy and 
disinterestedness worthy of those who have preceded us, who have 
opened the way for us, and who are now entered into their rest. It 
is as true now as it was in the days of the Puritan Robinson, that 
God hath yet more light to break forth from this Holy Word; and 
while the church is faithful to study that word, this light will con- 
tinue to increase till the time of the end. 

It is said that we must understand the Bible by the same means 
by which we understand any other book ; that the Bible must be 
interpreted by the common laws of language, just as every other 
book must be interpreted. This statement may convey a great, fun- 
damental, practical truth — or it may enwrap an error which shrivels 
the spirit, kills the soul, and denies God — either, according to the 
application which is made of the words. 

It is plain enough, from the very nature of the case, that if God 
gives to any of his creatures a revelation, oral or written, it must be 
given in some language to which they are accustomed, which they 
can understand, as they understand other lnnguages that they speak 
and read. Otherwise, it is no revelation to them ; they still need 
another to let them into the mysteries of the first ; and if this ex- 
planatory revelation be not in the common speech, there must be still 
another and another and another, till you come at last to one which 
is given in the common style of verbal communication — and this 
last one is in fact the only revelation made to those who receive the 
communications ; and God is he who does the last thing first, when 
the doing of the last supersedes the necessity of all the rest. 

1* 



6 

All this is obvious from the very nature of the case ; and when we 
turn to the matter of fact as it really exists on the pages of the 
Bible, we find all this and much more than this of the same kind, to 
be true of the revelation therein presented to us. Revelation, as it 
stands in the Bible, is given, not only in the common language of 
the generations to which it was addressed, but also in the peculiar 
style and manner of each one of the persons originally chosen to be 
the channels of the revelation ; the style essentially changing, not 
only with each different generation, but with each different person, 
however near to or remote from his coworkers in time and place — 
the same diversities appearing in the same manner as among an 
equal number of any other writers, who give utterance to their 
own thoughts merely, without suggestions from the Divine Mind. 
In the language and style of the different books of the Bible, the 
influence of each writer's own peculiar genius and temperament, his 
education, the incidents of his life, his employments, the circumstan- 
ces by which he was surrounded, the society, the scenery, the cli- 
mate with which he was familiar, is all just as obvious and as 
strongly marked as in the case of any writers whatever. Inspira- 
tion, though it be plenary and direct from the Almighty, removes 
none of these influences, touches them not ; it lies back of them all, 
it sets them all in motion, but obliterates not, scarcely fades even, 
any of the peculiarities arising from them. As the Jewess Rebecca 
stood at the window of the tower, and described, in her own animated 
speech, to the wounded Ivanhoe, the exciting incidents of the bat- 
tle which was raging outside the walls, so the holy seers in ecstatic 
vision witnessed things divine, and each in his own peculiar style 
and manner gave utterance to what he saw and felt, the divine affla- 
tus exerting no other influence over his language than what was 
necessary to make the description accurate. 

In Isaiah we see a self-possessed, mighty, sublime Hebrew mind, 
with a thorough Hebrew education, using language and imagery de- 
rived from the scenery, the sacred books, and the historical incidents 
of the Hebrew land and nation ; in Ezekiel, a Hebrew education 
acting on a Hebrew mind, excitable, enthusiastic, aerial, fanciful, 
overflowing with imagery derived from the wild scenery and bril- 
liant, coruscating skies of the country of the captivity, along the 
banks of the great northern river Cbebar ; in Daniel, still a He- 
brew mind, but of different structure from either of the preceding, 
and a Hebrew education too, but superadded to it all the Chaldee 
culture, and an imagination shaped, vivified, populated by the luxu- 



rious courts, the gorgeous palaces, the gigantic sculptures of the bar- 
baric capitals, Babylon and Shushan and Ecbatana. The modern 
traveller now visiting the stupendous ruins of the ancient cities 
of the East, sees at the present day the book of Daniel, as to its 
most striking peculiarities, all reproduced, as it were, before his 
eyes. 

Such is the language and style of the Biblical writers, even under 
the influence of the highest and most direct action of inspiration, that 
is, the prophetic. How clearly, then, must the like influences be seen 
in the argumentative, the didactic, the historic portions of the sacred 
record ! 

There is, then, a great, a fundamental, a practical truth in the 
statement, that we must understand the Bible by the same means by 
which we understand any other book — that the Bible must be in- 
terpreted by the common laws of language, just as every other book 
must be interpreted. 

And yet, taking this statement in a one-sided aspect, and not recog- 
nizing the great peculiarity of the Bible as God's living word, these 
same words enwrap a wretched, pernicious error. 

The volume which we call the Bible, though written by parts, in 
ages and climes widely remote, in languages diverse, and by writers, 
in many instances, of no personal intimacy with each other, is not a 
bundle of disconnected tracts, without harmony, concert or design. 
Many minds and many hands throughout many ages were employed 
to produce the volume ; but there was one superintending spirit, and 
one continuous plan through the whole. The actual author of the 
Bible throughout is One ; it is He who hnoiceth the end from the 
beginning, who is the same yesterday and to-day and forever. If 
the book gives a true account of itself, when the sacred penman put 
down the first chapter of Genesis, the Divine Spirit saw clearly the 
last chapter of Revelation, and all the intermediate parts, which in 
continuance were fashioned, came together at the proper time and in 
the right place, with at least as much of plan and contrivance and 
previous design, as were manifest when the different pieces of Solo- 
man's temple, which received their perfect finish in the forest and 
the quarry, were put together in the city of the great king, with not 
one unfitting joint or uncomely protuberance, yet without noise of axe 
or hammer. He who denies or will not recognize this fact, can never 
interpret the Bible aright, however closely in his interpretations he 
may adhere to the common laws of language. Here is an element, 
an important, an all-pervading, an essential element, for which the 



common laws of language make no provision, because there is 
nothing else like it in the whole history of the human mind. A 
book is produced in ihe progress of some two thousand years, by 
some forty or fifly different writers, on every variety of subject, and 
in every variety of style, and yet, all unconciously, so far as the 
writers themselves were concerned, with one uniform purpose, with 
one identical object, never for a moment lost sight of from beginning 
to end, by the Divine Mind, the real author of the volume. Of 
course this great peculiarity must give rise to some peculiarities in 
interpretation, and, in some respects, the Bible must receive, at 
the hands of the expositor, a treatment different from that to which 
any other volume is entitled. Some of these peculiarities are the 
typical character of persons and things and acts in the Old Testa- 
ment ; the twofold, and, in some cases, manifold fulfilment of the 
prophecies, not a few of which, as Lord Bacon says, being of the 
nature of their author, with whom a thousand years are as one day, 
are not fulfilled punctually and at once, but have springing and ger- 
minaat accomplishment throughout many ages, though the height or 
fulness of them may refer to some one age ; that is, to the Messianic 
period, and to the person of the Messiah. 

Not all the ridicule and misrepresentation of rationalistic interpre- 
ters, evangelical or otherwise ; not all the extravagance and folly of 
allegorists and spiritualizers and double-sense men will ever deter 
the sound, bold, consistent Scriptural interpreter from a full recogni- 
tion, and a distinct, open-handed use, in all his exegesis, of this 
great peculiarity of the Sacred Writings. By the common laws of 
language as applied to Scriptural exegesis, we come to the knowl- 
edge of this peculiarity of the Bible; by the common laws of lan- 
guage we are able to develope to others the principles on which it 
rests ; and by the common laws of language we ascertain the passages 
which require the application of these principles and those which 
do not admit it. Nothing is left to the caprice or fancy of the inter- 
preter, any more than in any other branch of interpretation; there 
is nothing conjectural, nothing uncertain; it all rests on a sound 
and solid basis of Scriptural exegesis. It is a principle which has 
been known and acted upon by the church in all ages of its exis- 
tence ; it is a principle constantly relied upon by the writers of the 
New Testament in their interpretation of the Old, and without it 
exegesis in many places is as barren as a heath in the desert, as 
well as forced, unnatural and untrue. 

The truth on this subject was long since clearly seen, and is hap- 



9 

pily expressed in the following words, quoted from Nicholas de Lyra 
by Gieseler (K. G. v. 114, 115): Omnes expositiones mysticae 
praesupponunt sensum litteralera tanquara fundaraentum : propter 
quod sicut aedificium declinans a fundamento disponitur ad ruinam, 
sic expositio mystica discrepans a sensu litterali reputanda est inde- 
cens et inepta. . . . Et ideo valentibus proficere in studio Sacrae 
Scripturae necessarium est incipere ab intellectu sensus litteralis: 
inaxime cum ex solo sensu litterali et non ex mysticis possit argu- 
mentum fieri ad probationem vel declarationem alicujus dubii, secun- 
dum quod dicit Augustinus, etc. 

It was from this author that Luther learned the art of sacred in- 
terpretation insomuch that it was said : 

Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset. 

The same words, interpreted by the same lexical and grammatical 
laws, give a very different impression to different minds in different 
subjective states. The dry, unimaginative reader may carefully pe- 
ruse a poem of Milton's, parse every sentence by the strictest rules 
of English grammar, and give to each word its proper dictionary 
meaning, and yet nowhere find the ideas, which from almost every 
page break upon the mind of the poet, who has learned English from 
the same grammar and dictionary. The stream cannot rise higher 
than the fountain, and the mind can grasp no idea of which it has 
not the prototype within itself. Can an inhabitant of the tropics un- 
derstand what is meant by a snow-storm ? or a Laplander form any 
just conception of the luxuries of an orange-grove? Let both read 
the same descriptions of these objects, let both interpret the language 
of these descriptions by the same grammatical and lexical laws, and 
how different will be the impressions left on the two minds ! When 
the Christian reads what Jesus said to Martha, one thing is needful, 
his own Christian consciousness teaches him that true religion, the 
love of Christ, is here meant as the one thing needful, and both gram- 
mar and lexicography sustain his position ; but the rationalist Paulus, 
who has no Christian consciousness, in the proper sense of the term, 
can see in these words nothing more than a declaration from the in- 
tellectual and temperate Rabbi to the anxious woman cumbered about 
much serving, and eager to prepare a sumptuous entertainment for 
her beloved teacher, that one dish is enough for supper (Kom. N. T. 
II. 744), nor can grammar and lexicon alone prove the interpretation 
wrong. 

Again, a man is not capable of finding in a book what he is sure 



10 

beforehand eannot exist there. The irreligious rationalist, however 
acute as a Grammarian or learned as a lexicographer, is under an 
inability both natural and moral, in respect to the right and full inter- 
pretation of God's Word. For many of the ideas which God's Word 
expresses he has in his own mind no prototype; and, moreover, he 
is so sure beforehand that Moses and David and Isaiah and Daniel 
and other writers of the Old Testament could know nothing of the 
Christ of the New Testament, that no possible mode of expression, 
of which language is capable, in writings acknowledged to be theirs, 
can convey to his mind any idea of the kind* Is it not perfectly ob- 
vious, then, that the believer and the unbeliever may be equally well 
skilled in the laws of grammar and lexicography, and equally strict 
in their application of these laws to a given passage of the Old Tes- 
tament, and yet come to widely ditferent conclusions as to its mean- 
ing ? They go from different starting points, they proceed on differ- 
ent principles; and their conclusions, therefore, though both admit 
and apply the same laws of language, are as different from each 
other, as are the effects of the same rays of light when passing through 
a colored and a colorless glass. 

Rejecting, then, this great fact of the Divine authorship and un- 
broken harmony of the whole of the written Word, the principle of 
interpretation to which we have referred, though entirely correct in 
one view of it, becomes a pernicious error in another. 

In a Christian view of the matter, everything in the Bible, even 
the most trivial narrative, is a word of God, a prophecy, which finds 
its fulfilment in the souls of men throughout all ages; and that, too, 
whether it belong to the patriarchal period of childlike simplicity, or 
the rude barbarism of the time of the Judges, or to any of the more 
intellectual and cultivated ages; and this was so designed by the 
Great Author, yet without any deviation from the language and man- 
ner and mode of thought appropriate to each period and person, and 
without any special care to preserve niceness of style or elegance of 
phrase. The manger in which the infant Saviour was laid, was a com- 
mon thing which had been used for feeding cattle, and could be again 
so used, and not an ecclesiastical utensil, very artistically got up and 
very ceremoniously handled. There are two parts of revelation, the 
letter, which is the body, and the inspiration of the Almighty, which 
is the soul. It is in the form of a servant, and thus it dwells among 
us, yet full of grace and truth. What does God care for our ideas 
of the refined and the common, the great and the small? He who 
makes planets and moons and suns with a word, and furnishes and 



11 

carpets the earth, sees not the great difference which we see between 
the furniture of the cottage and that of the palace. If one chooses, 
he may see only the shell of revelation ; or if he chooses, he may feel 
the spirit of the Eternal One breathing therefrom. 

In certain respects we may truly say, that the whole Bible is one 
great poem, of which God is the author ; the subject, the fall and the 
rising again, the ruin and the recovery of man, and the physical 
creation in immediate connection with man — and the several sacred 
writers, in the long succession of ages, were but God's amanuenses, 
whom he commanded to write for the instruction of men. Without 
the possession and the application of the poetic element and the reli- 
gious sentiment, it is impossible to interpret the Bible richly and 
truly, even with all the learning which the best grammars and dic- 
tionaries can give ; while, with the poetic element strongly developed 
and under the guidance of a pure and powerful religious sentiment, 
the general teachings of the Bible will be clearly apprehended, how- 
ever erroneous may be the understanding of some particular words 
and phrases. In the final result, a Bunyan is a far more sure and 
instructive expositor than a Strauss or a Bauer, though the Puritan 
rhapsodist may make ten blunders in the exposition of the words of 
a particular text, where these Hegelian critics Avould make one ; 
and all the extravagant allegorizing of old Bunyan, and his often ab- 
surd typology, is not one whit more extravagant and absurd (while 
at the same time it is vastly more pious and Christlike) than the 
bold, dashing, truth-defying hypotheses of these irreligious, ambitious 
theorizers. 

The words of the Bible are not merely dictionary words, they are 
not even theological words merely, they are Divine words, they are 
spirit and they are life ; and the philologian, and even the theologian, 
being merely such, and acting solely by the laws of their respective 
professions, may make, and often do make, the most murderous work 
with them. The Bible thought in the Bible phrase, is a glorious 
bird, instinct with joyous life, of beauteous plumage and thrilling note, 
soaring and glittering amid the rays of the morning sun, filling the at- 
mosphere with heavenly music ; and the dry, rationalistic philologist, 
the hard, unsympathizing theologian, he is the ornithologist with his 
gun and dissecting knife ; he shoots the living bird, she falls to the 
ground motionless, voiceless, with plumage bereft of all the changeful 
brilliancy of color which depends on life ; he takes his knife and 
skins the poor dead thing, and stretches the skin over a stick, and 
holding it up, exclaims with triumph: "There, see, I have analyzed 



12 

this ; tins is what it is when scientifically resolved, by a practised 
hand, into its original elements; behold the achievements of exe- 
getical and theological science!" Analyzed! rather, murdered, 
fiuyed. destroyed. 

Such, in general, are my impressions in regard to the Bible and 
its exposition, philological and theological ; but in order to give a 
more full expression of my views, and to preclude misunderstanding, 
I would now describe, somewhat in detail, some of the principal 
Jl Ki.es and Hindrances to the Right Interpretation op 
God's Written Word. 

I have no design or expectation of exhausting the subject in a sin- 
gle essay ; my purpose is simply to give an outline sufficiently exten- 
sive to indicate my own position and my own practical course in re- 
spect to the noble science of Scriptural Interpretation, or Bib- 
lical Exegesis. 

I. Helps. 

(1) Philology. Under this term I include, for convenience sake, 
all which may properly belong to the mechanical and the external of 
a verbal revelation, oral and written. The letters of the alphabet 
(if the revelation be a written one), the words, ihe structure of sen- 
tences, the mataphors, the modes of expression, the customs, the geo- 
graphical position, the climate, the physical productions, the history, 
must all be studied and known by the accomplished philologist. In 
proportion as the people to whom the revelation is given, is remote 
from us in time and place, and diverse in character and manners, so 
much the more essential are all these points to the ascertaining of the 
meaning of the revelation with sufficient clearness and fulness to be 
an authorized interpreter of it to others. 

God's written Word has (as it must have, if it would accomplish 
the purpose for which it was given) this peculiarity; to the simple 
soul seeking simply salvation from if, its teachings essential for this 
purpose are all perfectly plain, and speak directly to the heart. In 
this respect, It is all plain to him that under standeth, and right to 
them that find knowledge. At the same time, its full elucidation and 
defence, the opening of the great storehouses of its wealth, the teach- 
ing of it in its fulness to others, requires the most laborious research, 
the most extensive learning, a whole life devoted to this great duty; 
and for this purpose among others, God has set apart the ministry, 
to be wholly given to the work ; and in this respect the priest's lips 
should keep knowledge, and the people should seek the law at his mouth ; 



13 

for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts — and wo to the priest 
who is incompetent or unfaithful, and wo to the people who sustain 
and confide in such a priesthood ! 

As God, in making a revelation to any people, uses the language 
of that people, so he especially accommodates himself to their minds, 
habits and associations. His first object is to be understood by them ; 
and through them to make himself understood by others. 

The first and much the greater portion of the written revelation 
which we have, was made in the Hebrew language to the Hebrew 
people, a language and a people exceedingly remote and diverse from 
us in regard to almost everything which constitutes a language and 
a people. We have scarcely anything in common with them except 
a common humanity and the same Deity ; a common depravity and 
the need of the same method of salvation ; and it is precisely because 
we have these most important things in common with them, that the 
Bible on these topics is so plain and intelligible to the humble, be- 
lieving, prayerful inquirer. We have the same sun and moon and 
stars ; and yet we can scarcely be said to have the same heavens 
over our heads or the same earth beneath our feet ; so different were 
their skies and fields and forests from ours. Instead of being like 
them in habits of life and modes of thought, our inner and outer life 
is as wholly unlike that of the ancient Hebrews, as a modern cotton 
factory is unlike Solomon's temple, and the - difference is very much 
of the same kind. 

All the circumstances and scenes of common, everyday life, which 
mould the thoughts and form the habits of the child, and thus make 
up the growth of the man, were as different among the Hebrews from 
what they are among us, as can well be conceived. In the applica- 
tian of science and art, for example, to the uses and conveniences of 
life, in contrast with our numerous facilities for journeying and trans- 
portation, the Hebrews knew nothing of a road (1 Sam. 27: 10) as 
we understand the word road; they had no idea of any such thing 
as a bridge, and there is but one instance in the whole Hebrew his- 
tory of so great a convenience as a ferry boat, and that was in the 
latter part of the reign of their greatest king, and is alluded to as a 
luxury for the king's household (2 Sam. 19: 18). The distaff for 
spinning and the loom worked by hand were all the machinery they 
had for manufacturing cloth ; of sugar and coffee and tea they had 
never heard ; hair-combs and pocket-knifes and even pockets were 
quite unknown to them; wheelbarrows and threshing machines, 
steam-engines and carding machines and nail^factories they had never 

2 



14 

formed an idea of; paper and quills and wafers they never used ; and 
instead of our stereotype plates and power presses, striking off a 
whole Bibk in two minutes, they had no way of making books but 
by a process which for facility and speed of writing was very much 
like engrafting on copperplate or cutting letters in a tombstone. 
What could they have in common with our bustling, worldly, restless, 
business habits ? or what have we in common with their contented, 
slow, quiet, contemplative walk along the earth ? Their very lan- 
guage and their mode of using language was in almost everything 
the reverse of ours. Their primitive words are verbs instead of 
nouns, they gave names to actions before they gave names to things; 
their books begin where ours end, and when we read their writings 
we always seem to ourselves to be reading backwards ; they wrote 
consonants only and had no use for vowels. What we express 
directly by a simple noun, they often designate by a picture, as for 
example, the pupil of the eye, because it always reflects a little image 
of the person looking into it, they call the little man, the eye's daughter. 
They loved to give utterance to their thoughts in symbols and in 
types, in allegories and parables and riddles, and all their literature 
abounds with expedients of this kind. But all such things are now 
quite estranged from our literature. We admit of no symbols into 
our daily life but bank-notes and coupons and evidences of debt ; 
for types we have none except such as are wanted for printing; 
our allegories and parables are mainly the electioneering paragraphs 
in our newspapers, and instead of propounding riddles, we sharpen 
our wits by betting on elections. 

How wholly unsymbolic, how exclusively utilitarian our mind is in 
contrast with the Hebrew, may be seen from the simple fact that we 
have displaced the cross from our church towers and put in its place 
a weathercock. The cross is of no particular use for our every-day, 
worldly business, and a weathercock is very convenient for showing 
the changes and direction of the wind ; but viewed as symbols for a 
Christian church, how dignified and appropriate the one, how wretch- 
edly inappropriate, what a satire upon Protestantism the other! 
With such unsymbolic, such anti-symbolic tendencies, no wonder the 
rationalist of modern times finds so much which to him is absurdity 
in the Hebrew symbols and types and allegories, and that he makes 
such wretched work of their interpretation. Should an old Hebrew 
of David's or Daniel's time just now drop down among us, look at- 
tentively on us and all our surroundings, and hear us, from our point 
of view, reading and expounding David's Hebrew Psalms or Daniel's 



15 

prophetic symbols, would he not wonder with unutterable wonder, 
what book we could have in hand, or rather, if he knew, would he 
not, according to the Hebrew practice, stop both his ears and run ? 
(Acts 7: 57.) 

These are but specimens of the Hebrew life, of the whole circle of 
Hebrew ideas and conceptions, in contrast with ours ; and where is 
the point of contact between the Hebrew mind and ours ? God gave 
this revelation, not only in the Hebrew language, but exactly in the 
sphere of the Hebrew life ; and how can we understand this revela- 
tion so as to be qualified to interpret it to others, unless we under- 
stand the Hebrew language and the Hebrew life ? And how can 
we attain this knowledge without long, earnest, persevering study ? 
In other words, how can one be an interpreter of the Bible without 
being a philologian ? 

Some parts of revelation were given in the Chaldee language, a 
sister dialect of the Hebrew, and very much like it in every respect. 
The New Covenant was given in Greek ; but a Greek which was 
formed by Hebrews, and which cannot be understood without a 
knowledge of Hebrew. In its letters and most of its words it is 
Greek, but Hebrew in almost everything else. 

The interpreter of God's written Word, then, should be a philolo- 
gian in these three languages, the Hebrew, the Chaldee and the 
Greek, especially the first, as the foundation of all the rest ; he must 
be thoroughly acquainted with the Hebrew life, and the influences 
under which it was formed, and the whole circle of ideas in which it 
revolved; and this knowledge is an indispensable requisite to the 
full understanding of the revelation which God originally gave to 
the Hebrews. The interpreter must be able to put himself in the 
exact place where the Hebrew stood when God spake to him, if he 
would hear God's voice as the Hebrew heard it. This object can be 
accomplished only by severe and earnest and long-continued philo- 
logical study ; and for this there is, there can be no possible substi- 
tute ; the interpreter must be, always and everywhere, a student, a 
philologian — and here is where the learned rationalist, though not a 
pious man, may be a great, an essential, an indispensable help to him. 

Let the student always remember this : that there can be no safe 
exegesis of a difficult text without a minute, accurate, searching, sure- 
footed grammatical analysis — a diligent delving to the deepest roots — 
a microscopic inspection of the finest ramifications of the language ; 
we never can know what the Bible means except by what the Bible 
says. 



16 

But it is not enough that the interpreter be a philologian merely, 
ho must have other helps besides philology. 

(2) Logic. The philologian without logical power makes but a 
superficial, unreliable, wordy interpreter. The good interpreter must 
understand the mind as well as the speech, the subjective as well as 
the objective, of his author. He must remember that man has a brain 
as well as a tongue, or with all his research he is like one digging 
for a spring of water in a heap of loose sand thrown together by the 
wind. Not a few of such interpreters we have, and with wondrous 
self-complacency do they bestow their tediousness on us, and were it 
ten times more than it is, still they would gladly bestow it all on us ; 
for as the Scripture says : a fool is wiser in his own conceit than 
seven men that can render a reason ; and he who can render a reason, 
is the logician. 

In regard to such writers as we have in the Bible, logical power 
with but limited philology goes truer and deeper than weak logic 
with extensive philology ; as any one will readily see who will but 
take the pains to compare the loosely learned and non-religious Kui- 
noel on the Gospels with the terse, nervous, intensely religious John 
Calvin. Kuinoel, in many places, seems to know everything except 
what the writers of the Gospels were thinking of when they wrote ; 
Calvin always knows just this and seems to know but little else. 
Which is the better interpreter ? One man to interpret another must 
have a mind of his own, he must know the laws of mind, and under- 
stand how thought educes thought in logical sequence; and this 
knowledge must be constantly applied in the interpretation of writers 
who know both what they wish to say and how to say it. 

Still, the strong logician should understand well the principles of 
philology, as applied to the writer he undertakes to interpret, or he 
will continually go astray. With all his logic he is like a strong 
man groping with a stick in the dark ; here and there there is a stum- 
bling-block or a pitfall which he fails to feel out ; and in every such 
place he is sure to fall. His strength does not save him, it only 
makes his fall the harder. Still worse is it with him if he imagines 
there is but one form of logic in the world, and that his author, if he 
think and reason at all, must think and reason in the same line with 
himself. When the Scriptures speak of the coat of Christ, he thinks 
of the fashion of his own day and has no other idea of a coat ; he 
will draw a very complete picture of the garment and call it Christ's, 
though it has not the remotest resemblance to the original. He is as 
much out of the way as the Dutch painter, who represents Abraham 



17 

pursuing the confederate kings with his trained servants carrying 
muskets and pistols. As a pregnant illustration of this, read such 
works as Owen on the Hebrews, or Macknight on the Epistles. 
Able books in their way and showing no small amount of intellectual 
acumen and industrious scholarship, but how many things they think 
of, how many arguments they have, how much meaning they find in 
Paul, at which the apostle himself would be astonished with great 
astonishment if he knew it were attributed to him ! The same is 
true of some of the purest and strongest of our New England writers. 
If Moses and Isaiah and David and John and Paul had been natives 
of New England, habituated to the New England modes of thought, 
educated in New England colleges and settled ministers over New 
England parishes, these expositions of our excellent fathers would 
have been very correct ; but as matters are, they in many cases rather 
project themselves than expound the sacred writers. Dr. Burton, in 
his proof-texts for the Taste Scheme, has the most comforting convic- 
tion that the apostle Paul was to the full of the same philosophy with 
himself; and Dr. Emmons, in his Scriptural proofs of the Exercise 
Scheme, has the most unflinching assurance that the apostle Paul was 
clearly and heartily an exerciser ; but I suspect the apostle would 
be greatly surprised to learn that he was either the one or the other, 
and as much confounded if the question were put to him which he was, 
as if he were asked whether he were a Lockeian or a Coleridgeite. 
Those questions were not up in his day, nor did the apostle's reasoning 
run on those lines. You might as well start the question whether he 
journeyed from Miletus to Jerusalem on a railroad or in a steamboat ; 
and adduce long and learned arguments in favor of one of these hy- 
potheses and against the other. It is not any one form of scholastic 
logic that the Biblical interpreter needs ; nor any one scheme of men- 
tal philosophy regularly drawn out. But he needs the universal logic 
of strong common sense, for this is the kind of logic always and every- 
where used by the writers of the Bible. 

Worst of all, then, as applied to the interpretation of the Bible, 
is the nineteenth century jargon of continental Europe, which its vo- 
taries dignify with the name of philosophy, and by it sweep into non- 
existence the Bible and the soul and God and all objective reality. 
Very felicitously have the self-styled philosophers and critics and 
theologians of this school been depicted by a recent English poet, 
who speaks of the land where 

2* 



18 

li "Where Hegel taught, to his profit and fame, 
That something aiul nothing were one and the same; 
The absolute difference never a jot being 

IVixr haying and not having, being and not being, 
But wisely declined to extend his notion 
To the finite relations of thalers and groschen. 

"Where Strauss shall ten eh you how martyrs died 

For a moral idea personified, 

A myth and a symbol, which vulgar sense 

Received for historic evidence. 

Where Bauer can prove that trac theology 

Is special and general anthropology, 

And the essence of worship is only to find 

The realized God in the human mind. 

"Where Feurbach shows how religion began 

From the deified feelings and wants of man, 

And the Deity owned by the mind reflective, 

Is human consciousness made objective. 

Presbyters, bend, 

Bishops, attend ; 
The Bible's a myth from beginning to end. 

"We worship the Absolute-Infinite, 

The Universe-Ego, the Plenary- Void, 

The Subject-Object identified, 

The great Nothing- Something, the Being-Thought, 

That mouldeth the mass of Chaotic Naught, 

"Whose beginning unended and end unbegun 

Is the One that is All, and the All that is One. 

Hail Light with Darkness joined ! 

Thou Potent Impotence ! 

Thou Quantitative Point 

Of all Indifference ! 
Great Non-Existence, passing into Being, 
Thou two-fold Pole of the Electric One, 
Thou Lawless Law, thou Seer all Unseeing, 
Thou Process, ever doing, never done ! 

Thou Positive Negation ! 

Negative Affirmation ! 
Thou great Totality of everything 
That never is, but ever doth become, 

Thee do we sing. 

The Pantheist's King, 
With ceaseless bug, bug, bug, and eadless hum, hum, hum." 

Of all the perverters of God's truth, who have lived since the days 
of the Gnostics, these ultra-Hegelian and Tubingen critics are unques- 
tionably the most extravagant — the worst. They carry their own 



19 

refutation with them ; they are in themselves a complete reductio ad 
absurdum. Like a locomotive engine off the track, they have run 
their science completely into the ground, dashing and overturning 
everything in their way. Their extravagance and impiety have pro- 
duced a strong reaction in the best minds of their own land, so that 
many now sympathize with the historian Niebuhr, who said in regard 
to the education of his son, " he shall be taught that the ancients had 
only an imperfect knowledge of the true God, and that these gods 
were overthrown when Christ came into the world." " He shall be- 
lieve in the letter of the Old and New Testaments, and I shall nur- 
ture in him from his infancy a firm faith in all that 1 have lost, or 
feel uncertain about" Let not this impious extravagance, already 
become effete and about to be cast off in the land of its birth, be in- 
troduced into our country as a new and all-comprehensive philosophy, 
fitted to solve all mysteries, and by excess of darkness make universal 
light, as the extreme of cold produces the phenomena of a burn. 

As philology is not enough without logic, so logic is not sufficient 
without philology ; and in addition to both, a third quality is indis- 
pensable, and that is sympathy, a strong, living sympathy with the 
writers whom you undertake to interpret. 

(3) Sympathy. Where one mind completely and strongly sympa- 
thizes with another, a mutual understanding is perfectly easy ; there 
is an air-line telegraph between them, and there is no need of con- 
structing roads around the mountains and building bridges over the 
rivers to bring them into communication with each other. But where 
there is no sympathy, there is constant misapprehension, difficulties 
everywhere occur, and they are not easy to be surmounted. As soon 
as one obstacle is overcome, another immediately stands behind it, 
and so continually 

" Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise." 

If the unsympathizing expositor imagines there are no difficulties, 
if he thinks himself proceeding smoothly and easily along, it is a 
certain proof that he has wholly mistaken his way and is going en- 
tirely wrong. The sympathizing interpreter sees his author's mean- 
ing almost instinctively, with even a moderate help from grammar 
and dictionary ; while all the grammars and dictionaries in the world 
can never make an unsympathizing mind a good commentator. 

Herein lies Luther's great and crowning excellence as a translator 
and expositor, — his perfect sympathy with the Biblical writers. He 
had a vast amount of that peculiar Shakspearian power of throwing 



20 

himself into the exact position of the men whom he would represent, 
of being for the time the very persons whom he describes ; and of 
reproducing, is his own living, glowing words, the very heart and soul 
of the writers whom he is explaining. His interpretations are as 
much superior to those of the mere philologist, as the daguerreotype 
portrait, painted directly by the rays of the sun, is superior to the 
Silhouette profile made only of white and black paper. 

Here is manifest the great mistake of those who would shut us up 
to one single mode of interpretation, and turn away their faces with 
contempt from any form of Biblical exegesis which is not run in the 
mould of the dry philological criticism of the modern German school. 
They see no element of correct Biblical science in the glowing Christ- 
love of the church fathers ; in the acute discriminations of the school- 
men ; in the elevated, martyr-like sympathy of the great reformers ; 
in the deep, strong, earnest theology of the Puritans ; in the fervid, 
fertile, poetic piety of the mystics ; and yet for each of these elements 
there are, in the deep mines of the Scriptures, rich veins, which can 
be successfully wrought in no other spirit, by no other instruments 
than just these. The letter is good, in its place it is essential ; but 
the letter alone is not enough ; by itself it killeth, and the old maxim 
is true : Qui haeret in litera haeret in cortice. 

The devil in his temptations urged Christ to feed on bread, imply- 
ing that nothing else than bread could sustain life ; but Christ in re- 
ply adduces the Scriptural declaration : It is written, man shall not 
live by bread alone, bu{ by every word which proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God. But these word-critics, more close than Satan was, 
instead of allowing us bread, would compel us to feed on husks, 
husks only, always husks ; as if we were prodigal sons, tending the 
swine of foreigners, instead of being regenerated children, feasting at 
our own father's table. 

When I see presented to us, as Scriptural commentaries, folio dis- 
quisitions on this and that Greek particle in the New Testament, or 
this and that Hebrew particle in the Old Testament, proceeding from 
a mind which was never married to a heart, the work of men who 
never loved Christ, who never had a religious emotion, who can have 
no points of sympathy with the writers of the New Testament, I 
think of the waiter who imagines he has provided a sumptuous feast 
when he has covered the table with scoured, burnished, empty dishes. 
We need the dishes, it is true ; and the cleaner and the more polished 
they are, the more agreeable is the table ; but the feast is not fur- 
nished till there is something in the dishes which can be eaten ; nor 



21 

is the Bible interpreted by all the array of learning which can be 
brought to bear upon it, unless, in addition to the learning, there be 
heart and feeling in the interpretation. 

(4) Faith. There is truth in the words of Anselm : Qui non 
crediderit, non experietur ; et qui expertus non fuerii, non intelligit. 
For the full underslanding of the Scriptures there must be faith, 
and that not the mere faculty of believing, but the true, Scriptural, 
saving faith: that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, 
the evidence of things not seen; that faith which worheih by love, and 
purijieth the heart, and overcameth the world. This faith is the only 
inlet by which spiritual truth, deep and full, can pass into the soul; 
and the religious, the spiritual meaning of the Bible, is the ultimate, 
the true meaning; and how can one who has never received this 
meaning into his own mind, communicate it to the mind of another? 

Faith begins where knowledge ends, and the larger and more im- 
portant portion of the Bible is addressed to faith. The Bible, besides 
the direct and definite instructions which it affords, gives us also wavy 
outlines, dim foreshadowings of that which eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, nor heart conceived — of that which is too high for mortal 
speech, too glorious for mortal thought — and the man who has no 
faith, encounters, in all this, nothing but a dark, disagreeable, blinding 
fog; while to the eye of faith, it is all illumined by the rays of the 
sun below the horizon, spreading abroad the gorgeous panorama of a 
New England cloud-scene, and exciting the emotions which heaven 
will excite, if not presenting to the sight the well defined and exact 
pictures of the heavenly objects themselves. 

The poor blind eye of the unbelieving interpreter sees nothing of 
all this ; his poor dull ear hears nothing of it ; and by dint of con- 
stant hammering he can in due time make a class of Christian youth 
as blind and as dull as himself; and then he thinks he has made 
them ciitics, accurate commentators, who can always tell what they 
mean. To be sure they can always tell what they mean, but what 
is their meaning good for after they have told it? So the beggar 
can carry all his property over his shoulder in a wallet, but is that a 
distinction to be proud of? A man who carries only copper, can 
always make exact change, and yet, with many large pockets all 
stuffed and heavy, and with great jingle and ostentation of coin, he 
can buy very little of anything that is worth the having. What 
Christian student has not fell this in poring over the ponderous tomes 
of those unbelieving word-critics, who spin out volumes on usv and 
8s, on xai and 1 ! True, we must investigate the meaning of all 



52 

these particles, if we would become skilful and efficient interpreters 
of the Bible ; but to suppose that the true interpretation of the Bible 
does not go infinitely above and beyond all these verbal investigations, 
there is the fatal mistake. 

The great advantage which our rationalistic writers boast of, is, 
definite knowledge ; they can see all that they believe, they can take 
in all its metes and bounds; but faith (say they), faith, as you call 
it, has neither boundary nor definiteness. This is just the advantage 
which the petty German prince, with a territory a mile and a half 
square, has over queen Victoria. Ee can stand on the stoop of his 
lowly Schloss, and take in his whole dominion at a glance ; while the 
British queen may ascend to the highest turret of her loftiest castle, 
and strain her vision to the utmost, without reaching in any direction 
the boundary of her dominion. This advantage, my poor, unbeliev- 
ing friend, I envy you not ; nay rather, I am sorry for you, and 
heartily wish that you might have in the Bible such an empire as I 
have. With what I see in this glorious Bible of mine, I cannot con- 
fine myself to the jail-yard limits of your exegesis ; nor do I think 
that any advantage to truth or righteousness would be gained by so 
doing. I see a door, which to you does not exist, and it opens into 
heaven ; and if it does not open wide enough to show me distinctly 
the forms of the heavenly objects, or if my eye is not strong enough 
to seize the definite outline in all that blaze of glory, yet where you 
see nothing but a blue sky and the pale twinkling stars, which you 
can look upon and count without one burst of excitement, I have 
glimpses of a glory too dazzling for mortal sight, so that I tremble 
and dare not behold, and cannot describe it, and can only call upon 
others to look and see for themselves, and admire and adore with 
me. 

(5) The Holy Ghost. I love to give the old idea in the old phrase. 
The idea is as old as Christianity itself, and the phrase is coeval 
with the use of the English language in theology. It is as true now 
as it was in the Apostle's time, that the natural man perceiveth not the 
things of the Spirit ; they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know 
them, because they are spiritually discerned; and the things of God 
hnoweth no man but the Spirit of God. Nor are these words to be 
dephlogisticated, or turned aside, as if they had either no direct 
meaning at all, or a meaning applicable only to the apostolic period. 
They express a great, a constant, an unvarying truth, which lies deep 
in human nature ; and from the application of which man has never 
been exempt since the first apostasy. 




23 

The human soui by sin is broken off from its God, and it is never 
reunited to its parent stock till the Spirit of God descends upon it 
and draws it back to the source whence it fell. While alienated, it 
cannot understand God or the things of God. Can an eagle under- 
stand a poem, or a lion the architecture of a church ? True, there 
is a difference in the two cases, for the eagle and the lion have no 
constitutional capabilities of the kind supposed ; but man has all the 
constitutional powers with which he was created. His original na- 
ture is not annihilated ; it is buried deep under the ruins of the fall, 
and never emerges till called up by that voice, which, at some future 
day, all, who are in their graves, shall hear and shall come forth. 

Hence the necessity of a Divine illumination at every step of our 
Christian course ; hence the need of having the words of revelation 
quickened and brightened by the rays of the sun of righteousness 
beaming upon them from our own illuminated souls. It is a neces- 
sity which never ceases ; and no man can rightly interpret the Word 
without the continued illumination of the Spirit ; no man can call 
Jesus Lord but by the Holy Ghost. Without this Spirit there can be 
no large sympathy with the Word, no real faith in it ; and conse- 
quently, no hearty, practical knowledge of it, however much of phi- 
lology or of logic there may be. 

II. Hindrances. 

(1) Partisanship. It is the characteristic of a man to have definite 
and decided opinions ; and, whenever occasion calls for it, to give a full 
and unequivocal expression of them. But attachment to party is 
sometimes stronger than attachment to opinion. When a man is so 
in love with his own opinions that he is not willing to allow a fair 
and legitimate scope to the arguments which may be brought against 
them, or so enslaved to the interests of his party that the Scriptures 
themselves must always be made to subserve those interests, he is no 
longer a safe interpreter of God's Word. His eye is no longer single ; 
the light that is in him is becoming darkness. He acts, silently, un- 
consciously, perhaps, on the principle boldly and openly avowed by 
Jerome : 

Aliud esse yvfAvaarmSg scribere, aliud Soytiatwwg. In priori va- 
gam esse disputationem, et adversariis respondentem nunc haec nunc 
ilia proponere, argumentari ut libet, aliud loqui, aliud agere, panem 
ut dicitur ostendere, lapidem tenere. In sequenti autem aperta fpns, 
et, ut ita dicam, ingenuitas necessaria est* Epist. 30 (al. 50) ad 
Pammach. 



u 

John Cassian, Coll. XVII. Ille (Deus) tamen intimam cordis in- 
spirans pietatem, non verborum sonum, sed vatum dijudicat volun- 
tatis quia finis et aflfectus considerandus ut perpetrantis : quo potue- 
runt quidam, ut supra dictum est, etiara per mendacium (Rahab, Jos. 
II.) justificari, et alii per veritatis assert ionem perpetuae mortis in- 
currere (Deli la, Jud. XVI.). 

He is not Avilling to think as the Bible does, but the Bible must 
think as he does. He is always ready to take it for granted, to as- 
sume it as a thing beyond all dispute or question, that there is perfect 
agreement between him and the Bible, however great the discrepancy 
between the Bible and him. If any one differs from him, he calls it 
departing from the Bible, because he has put himself in the place of 
the Bible ; and if he can find no text to sustain his position, it is to 
the general scope and tenor of the Scriptures that he appeals ; as 
the Long Parliament, by a legislative fiction, used the king's author- 
ity to levy war against the king's person. "When you see a man re- 
sorting to the whole scope and tenor, you may be sure it is because he 
has no specific text in his favor ; he cannot fight by daylight, and so 
runs into the fog. 

The partisan has the faculty of proving aliquid ah aliquo ; as the 
papal writers, cardinals and popes themselves in the middle ages, 
gave Scriptural warrant to the papal organization by the text of the 
two witnesses in Rev. 11: 3, which two witnesses were the pope and 
cardinals ; by the greater light which God made to rule the day and 
the lesser light to rule the night (Gen. 1: 16), which greater light was 
the pope and lesser light the emperor ; by the apostolic declaration 
here are two swords (Luke 22: 38), which two swords are the spiritual 
and the temporal power, and Christ said these are enough, and said 
not they are too many ; the Apostle said there is no power but of 
God, the powers that be are ordained of God (Rom. 13: 1), but the 
pope is a power, and therefore he is of God ; God said to the prophet, 
behold I have this day set thee over nations and kingdoms (Jer. 1: 
10), and therefore the spiritual is above the temporal power ; and 
inasmuch as the Apostle affirms that he who is spiritual judgeth all 
things, yet he himself is judged of no man (1 Cor. 2: 15) ; therefore 
to a certainty the laity are under the jurisdiction of the clergy, and 
the clergy are exempt from the jurisdiction of the laity. (Gieseler, 
LV. 202-4. V. 97.) 

Again, of one text, the partisan will insist upon a close literal in* 
terpretation, because it makes for him ; of another text he insists upon 
a loofte, figurative interpretation) because the latter is against him* 



25 

In regard to the first his language is, the Bible says so ; but in regard 
to the second his phrase is, the Bible cannot mean so. Why not ? 
Because if it did mean so, the Bible would not mean as he does, and 
that is never in any case to be allowed. Thus Nestorius, in his zeal 
against calling the virgin Mary the mother of God, says : " Paul was 
a liar then, when, speaking of the deity of Christ, he says he was with- 
out mother;" but in the very same verse, in the very words imme- 
diately preceding, the text says he was without father also. The 
Deity was without a human parent on either side, Nestorius would 
say ; but does the text have any reference whatever to the subject of 
the underived deity of Christ? (Gieseler, II. 139.) 

The partisan never interprets consistently, throughout, on any well 
considered, general principles of interpretation, but proceeds, some- 
times on one principle and sometimes on another, just to suit the 
purpose of his present argument. He must have more than one 
string to his bow, and generally he must have a separate string for 
each separate arrow ; for, if he has not, he can seldom shoot without 
wounding himself. 

(2) Narrowness. There is a certain narrowness of thought, more 
amiable, disinterested and honest than partisanship, yet scarcely less 
prejudicial to the interests of a sound interpretation of Scripture. 
Accidental associations influence the mind like logical connections ; 
because the Duke of "Wellington was lean and had a large nose, there- 
fore leanness and nasal magnitude must be essential to military 
greatness. 

The Roman Catholics prayed for the dead, and therefore our 
Puritan fathers were averse to prayers at funerals, and often their 
dead were buried without this religious service. The Episcopalians 
read the Scriptures and repeated the Lord's Prayer in their religious 
service, and therefore our Puritan fathers would do neither ; and it 
was one of the great heresies of the Brattle Street Church in the 
year 1700, that the minister was permitted and even expected to read 
the Scriptures and repeat the Lord's Prayer as a part of the public 
worship. 

If the interpreter cannot rise above the narrowness of his own 
time and clique, God's Word in many places will be to him a sealed 
book or worse ; and he will use and abuse texts with an amazing 
latitude of exegesis. Thus Luke 16: 3, the Lord commended the un- 
just steward, has been used to prove that the God of the Old Testa- 
ment is not a good God ; and Luke 2: 36. Titus 2: 3, 4, Anna the 
prophetess, and the aged women teach the young women, have been 

3 



26 

used to prove that women have a right to preach in public as well as 
men. (Gioeler, IV. 022, f>i)8.) 

(.')) Faithlessness, Much of the Bible is addressed to faith, and 
he who has no faith, has neither eye nor ear for some of the most 
important portions of Scripture. lie lacks the inward organ to take 
hold on the outward object. As the poet Goethe very appropriately 
and beautifully says : 

"War' unser Aug;' nicht sonncnhaft, 
Wie mSchten wir die Son' erblicken ? 
Und war' in uns nicht Gottcskraft, 
"Wie mocht uns Gottlichcs cntziicken 3 

The unbeliever can never be a full and reliable interpreter of the 
Bible. He may write dictionaries and grammars and critical disqui- 
sitions, perhaps very good ones, xevy useful in their way; but in all 
this he does no more towards interpreting God's Word, than he who 
blows the bellows does towards playing the organ. Without the 
wind there can be no music; but yet the wind is not the music. To 
interpret the Bible rightly we must begin with the letter, but not 
stop there. The letter alone killeth, and without a Scriptural faith, 
there is no spirit to make alive. The hosts of unbelieving critics are 
somewhat like the industrious Zoophites, who build up the immense 
coral reefs in the ocean ; but they never cover them with verdure, 
or overspread them with life and song — this all comes from another 
and a higher source. The Word of God is not a rock or a skeleton, 
but a living, growing, fruit-bearing plant; yet it grows not, neither 
yields fruit, unless placed in the bright, warm sunshine of a living 
faith. Otherwise, it is but a root out of dry ground, having neither 
form nor comeliness, and exciting no desire. It is true that the skilful 
irreligious exegete can sometimes give profitable expositions of even 
the most religious portions of the Bible ; but it is mainly as one born 
deaf and dumb may be brought to articulate, by a labored imitation of 
the mode of expressing sensations, which he has never felt and can 
form no idea of. 

(5) Wickedness. Wickedness in one's own life and heart, or con- 
nivance with the wickedness of a surrounding world, disqualifies one 
to be a sound interpreter of God's Word. Jf thine eye be evil, thy 
whole body shall be fall of darkness, and if the light that is in thee be 
darkness, how great is that darkness ! How many false interpretations 
have been insisted upon from generation to generation ; what a load 
of lying exegesis now presses like an incubus upon the church, out 



27 

of deference to the wicked practices of an ungodly world 1 This is 
not all deliberate, wilful, conscious falsification, but a corrupt inclina- 
tion warps the intellect, distorts the mental vision. 

Christ never expected wicked men, remaining such, to receive his 
word. How can ye believe which receive honor one of another, and 
seek not the honor which cometh from God only ? The testimony of 
devils in his favor he peremptorily rejected, and bade them hold 
their peace. He would have such as they were stand away from his 
word, and not even commend it, lest they should pollute it. 

The greediness with which some ministers of the Gospel seize upon 
and promulgate eulogies on religion pronounced by great bad men, 
shows a state of feeling marvellously unlike Christ's. That, faith 
must be lame indeed that needs such crutches. If they felt like their 
Master, they would be pained rather than pleased by eulogies from 
such a source. The wicked man may see that religion is good for 
society, and the most ennobling interest of the individual; but in its 
depths and fruits he knows nothing of it, and touching it with his im- 
pure hands is but soiling and not sustaining it. It needs no such 
support. Let religion be poor, so that we be pure ; for the slightest 
touch of worldly pollution, however respectful and loving to appear- 
ance, puts her in a false position. The man who wishes to commend 
religion, let him be religious ; that is the best commendation which 
he can give, or which religion can accept. 

Scriptural interpretation, to be true, must be unworldly; and never, 
while the thought of wickedness is in the interpreter's heart, or the 
stain of wickedness is on his life, or a hankering for the praise of 
wicked men is in his soul, can his interpretations be relied upon. 
He may sometimes be in the right, but he is sure to be often in the 
wrong, and he is always untrustworthy. 

(5) Laziness and shallowness. There are sometimes, even in ec- 
clesiastical men, two very inconsistent principles contending for mas- 
tery, to wit, indolence and the love of notoriety, self-indulgence and 
a desire for influence. It is easier to gain notoriety and influence by 
superficial show, vapid declamation and confident assertion, in respect 
to the teachings of Scripture, than by hard, persevering, conscientious 
study of the original text. It is easier to hammer out tinsel than to 
dig into the gold-mine. Every ear can catch a sound, but there are 
few who can justly appreciate a thorough investigation. If a man 
has an inclination to shun or abridge labor, a disposition to blow up 
soap-bubbles and call them cherubim with a flaming sword, he is a 
very poor interpreter of God's Word. Yet how many such we have, 
and how people are imposed upon ! 



28 

Piety, even the true and heartfelt, cannot stand in the place of 
philology, any more than philology can stand in the place of piety ; 
and for a man to neglect philology under pretext of piety, is as if he 
should refuse to use his feet because he pretends to have angels' 
wings. Surely such 

" Can neither fly nor go." 

The laborious, conscientious and faithful student of God's Word 
may be, and often is, assailed with the cry of heresy by those who 
have not Greek enough to know the etymology, nor English enough 
to know the meaning, of the word ; and by their heartless unscrupu- 
lousness and ceaseless noise, they may for a while gain an advantage 
over him in the public mind. But let him not be anxious nor impa- 
tient ; fogs must clear away as the day advances, and frogs cannot 
croak when the sun shines. Let him be careful never to be a heretic, 
and all the exertions of those whose ignorance fills them with alarm, 
or whose enviousness excites them to activity, can never make him 
long seem to be one. 

Who, then, is the good Bible interpreter ? The good Bible inter- 
preter is the thorough philologist, the strong logician, the sound theo- 
logian. He is endowed with the rare gift of common sense, he has 
a rich poetic temperament, and an intense sympathy with the Bible 
writers. He has a large heart and an expansive intellect, superior 
to the unfairness of partisanship and the narrowness of prejudice. 
He is humble in his own eyes, and not puffed up with a conceit of 
his own attainments ; he is willing to learn from every quarter, and 
has sense enough to know that there is no quarter from which he 
cannot learn something. He who despises antiquity, or he who idol- 
izes antiquity ; he who loves whatever is modern, or he who hates 
whatever is modern ; he who contemns the foreign and adores the 
home, or he who contemns the home and adores the foreign ; he who 
is in any respect one-sided or unbalanced, cannot be the good inter- 
preter. The good interpreter must love his work, and love and sym- 
pathize with his pupils, and love the souls of men ; and above all 
must he love his God and Saviour with an all-absorbing, an un- 
quenchable love. He must be a man of deep piety, of glowing faith, 
and in the continuous enjoyment of the presence and aid of the Holy 
Ghost. And with all this he must have the gift of expressing his 
thoughts in a clear, condensed, energetic style ; for it is a correct 
judgment of that great master of Biblical interpretation, John Calvin, 
precipuam interpretis virtutem in perspicua brevitate esse positam. 



29 

And what is this Bible, which we must take so much pains to 
interpret ? 

It is God's word to man, and it is just like God and God's works, 
and very unlike man and man's works. It is like the country com- 
pared with a city ; like the mountain compared with a palace ; like 
the sun and clouds compared with a picture; like the forest and 
prairie compared with an artificial conservatory. It has its hard 
places and rough places and dark places, such as cultivated man in 
his fastidiousness seeks to avoid, but such as everywhere abound in 
. the works of God. It is many times rustic, and homely, and blunt, 
quite regardless of nicety and often not at all genteel ; yet always in 
exact keeping, and abounding in heights of sublimity and depths of 
pathos and exquisiteness of beauty and richness of instruction, such 
as no human compositions have ever reached. It is a rude collection 
of miscellaneous fragments, the remains of widely distant ages, thrown 
together apparently without order or connection, yet found by reli- 
gious experience to be most happily and carefully adjusted to each 
other and forming a complete, systematic whole ; as the rocks which 
compose the crust of the earth seem to the uninitiated a mass of con- 
fusion, deformity and waste, while the scientific eye sees that they 
are perfectly crystallized and systematically arranged and nicely ad- 
justed, without a blunder or a mistake. As are the Alps and Him- 
malehs and Andes to the crystal palace, or the Pantheon or the 
Roman St. Peter's, so is the Bible to the most finished products of 
human genius. 

All the knowledge which we have, or can have, in our present 
state of existence, of the spiritual world, of eternity, must be derived 
from it; it is our light in darkness, our comfort in adversity, our sup- 
port in death. All correct theology must come from it, all complete 
civilization must originate in it, all the good order of society must 
be sustained by it. It has given occasion to probably more than 
half of all the literary labor which has been performed in the 
world ; and the very highest and happiest efforts of the human mind 
have been put forth under its influence. The more one studies it, 
the more intensely does he become interested in it; the more he 
learns from it, the more he sees beyond that is yet to be learned ; 
and instead of ever exhausting it by the most earnest, the longest- 
continued and most successful research, the further he goes the fur- 
ther he has to go, while new beauties continue to develop on every 
side, and he never comes even to the beginning of the end. Canst 
thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to 



30 

perfection 1 And the same question we may ask as to God's Word. 
How little even Christian men, the world over, yet know of what is in 
their Bibles ! They are like the Indians and the Spaniards of Cali- 
fornia, who for ages had possession of those mountains and streams 
abounding with gold, without ever dreaming of the exhau6tless veins 
of wealth which lay in their bosom. 

In the opening of the rich mines of the Scripture, much has 
already been done, but very much more yet remains to be accom- 
plished, especially in bringing the great and varied wealth of the 
Bible to the full comprehension of the common reader. The remark' 
of the Puritan Robinson still holds true : God hath yet much light to 
break forth from his holy word — and happy is the man who can con- 
tribute in any degree to the breaking forth of this light. It is in the 
prosecution of this work that the honor and the power of the Ando- 
ver Institution has been chiefly manifested, and her full share of this 
glorious work she must still continue to do. The earnest, large- 
hearted, determined, indefatigable, learned Stuart ; the humble, 
richly gifted, deeply believing, laborious, scholar-like Edwards, have 
here labored most illustriously in this branch of sacred science; and 
it is with trembling diffidence and unfeigned self-distrust that I un- 
dertake to enter into their labors. I can only say that I love God's 
Word, that I have felt its power, and I trust in God's help ; and all 
the time and all the thought and all the mind and all the heart, which 
He sees fit to give me, shall be most faithfully, assiduously, uninter- 
ruptedly devoted to this one grand work — the bringing forth of the 
light from God's holy Word ; and may the blessed influences of this 
labor still continue to be seen in the ministry and the churches and the 
missions, which have been and are the chief glory of our land, the 
best hope of the world. 



Note, in reference to funeral services among our Puritan ancestors^ 
referred to on p. 56. 

Not being able to find in books the information I wished for on 
this subject, I wrote a letter of inquiry to that learned and indefati- 
gable antiquarian scholar, Rev. J. B. Felt, of Boston, stating my im- 
ion that the first instance of funeral prayers in Massachusetts 
was at the burial of Rev. Dr. Mayhew of Boston. The information 



31 

contained in Mr. Felt's reply to my letter is so accurate and curious, 
that I am sure my readers will be pleased to see it in full. 

Boston, Nov. 3, 1852. 
Prof. C. E. Stowe, 

Dear Sir, — Yours of yesterday I have just taken from the Post Office. 

As our fathers abstained from marrying with a ring and baptizing with 
marks of a cross, and from organs in their churches, lest such forms should 
bring them back to the Papacy, which they believed still lingered in the 
national Church of England, so, in all apparent probability, they abstained, 
for a long period, from offering prayer at funerals. Confirmatory of this 
was tfye example of the English Geneva Church, as described in 1641. 
They had the corpse carried to the grave and " the minister, if present, goes 
to the church and makes suitable remarks." In 1645, the Congregationalists 
of England had serious remarks at their funerals. Lechford, in 1641, ob- 
served as to Massachusetts : " At burials nothing is read nor any funeral 
sermon made, but all the neighborhood, or a good company of them, come 
together by tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to the grave, 
and there stand by him while he is buried. The ministers are most com- 
monly present." From the fact, that Congregationalism was greatly pro- 
moted in England by the influence of New England ministers, either viva 
voce or by their writings, it is very likely that there was a mutual consent 
and action on both sides of the Atlantic, as to the offering of serious remarks 
at funerals, by or even before 1645. The first instance of prayer at a fune- 
ral, that I have met with, is recorded in Sewall's diary, and had reference 
to the Rev. William Adams of Dedham, 1685, when he was buried. A 
Boston Newspaper of 1 730, has the subsequent remark : " Before carrying 
out the corpse (of Mrs. Sarah Byfield), a funeral prayer was made by one of 
the pastors of the Old church, which, though a custom in the country towns, 
is a singular instance in this place, but, it is wished, may prove a leading 
example to the general practice of so Christian and decent a custom." The 
instances here adduced carry back the practice of funeral prayers beyond 
the one you have mentioned. 

Very respectfully yours, 

Joseph B. Felt. 



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